


Faith

by qwanderer



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Holidays, Other, extensive use of wikipedia for historical scene-setting, this was almost a five plus one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:22:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21964882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwanderer/pseuds/qwanderer
Summary: “Oh!” said Aziraphale, startled. “But you say that the summer will return as if you know for certain that it will.”“That’s the funny thing about having faith out here in the bigger world,” Eve said. “It’s harder to believe here, but it’s also more necessary. Some things, we need to believe in order to survive.”
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 59
Collections: Good Omens Holiday Gift Exchange, qwanderer's pinch hits





	Faith

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AJfanfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AJfanfic/gifts).



**Winter Solstice**

**The vicinity of Eden, 3998 BC**

There had been six winters, so far.

During the first, Adam and Eve had been so very frightened. But when the light began to come back, they shrugged their shoulders and told themselves that this was just something the world did.

The second and third times, they hugged their children close and shivered through it, wondering if this time it was longer, or darker, and how often it would happen.

Between the fourth and fifth times, Eve made marks on the walls of the cave where they’d been taking shelter to see if she could keep count of the days between one and the next.

The sixth time, she made a mark on the cave wall to mark the deepest place the sun reached on the darkest day. 

Now the days were shortening again, and the humans watched the sun cut across the walls of their cave with a sort of nervous fascination. An angel and a demon watched the humans, in turn.

“Tomorrow,” Eve told her young boys when the sun reached only to her mark, and the right number of days had been tallied from last solstice. “Tomorrow the sun will start returning to us.”

“How do you know it’s going to come back tomorrow?” Crawly asked the little family. “How do you know it will come back this year at all? What if this year it just… doesn’t?”

The boys looked up at the serpent with wide, frightened eyes. Their parents, only slightly less so.

“Crawly!” Aziraphale protested. “That was uncalled for.”

“What?” the demon drawled. “I’m just asking questions. Stirring things up. It’s what I do!”

Aziraphale looked at the serpent. He looked gleeful, standing there leaning against the cave wall with his eyebrow raised and the corner of his mouth turned up. But that was just on the surface, and when Aziraphale peered more closely at those yellow eyes, the slightly pinched forehead between them and the darkness in their depths, Crawly looked somehow very tired. 

“We ask ourselves the same things,” Adam told the two beings. “Every year, we wonder.”

“Oh!” said Aziraphale, startled. “But you say that the summer will return as if you know for certain that it will.”

“That’s the funny thing about having faith out here in the bigger world,” Eve said. “It’s harder to believe here, but it’s also more necessary. Some things, we need to believe in order to survive.”

Aziraphale frowned, thoroughly confused, and shot a glance at Crawly to see what he thought of it.

Crawly looked at Eve as if he understood every word.

The humans huddled by their fire through the night, doubting and hoping and fearing and saying to themselves and to each other, over and over, “The sun will return. The summer will come again.” They clung to the words like a lifeline.

The next day they tracked the progress of the sun against the cave wall. When it passed Eve’s neat marking, the oldest boy whooped with joy.

Soon enough the whole family was dancing, leaping about in the midday sun and hollering noises of exulted joy. Eve gave them all some of the sweetest of their store of dried berries, and even offered some to the angel and the demon.

Crawly took the offered treat, but instead of tasting it himself, he held out his open hand to Aziraphale.

“We don’t need to eat,” Aziraphale said. “Why would they share their precious food with us when they need it so terribly themselves?”

Crawly shrugged. “My guess?” he offered. “Humans will take any excuse to throw a party.”

He threw a couple of the berries into his mouth, and offered the rest once more to Aziraphale.

They were, indeed, very sweet.

**Hanukkah**

**Jerusalem, 165 BC**

“Why this miracle?” Crawly asked, sitting next to Aziraphale on a short stone wall with a marvelous view of war-torn Jerusalem. “When there are so many things they need to help them survive, to help them recover from all the horrible things that have been happening here? Why give them ceremonial oil? Not something they could use to feed their children or treat their wounded.”

Aziraphale sighed deeply. There was an appeal to the demon’s words, but the angel had his orders, and he thought he understood the reasoning, at least, this time. 

“They fought for their faith. They want so badly to follow their customs and honor the Almighty.”

Crawly rolled her eyes. “Oh yes, just do as the Almighty says and everything will come up sunshine and rainbows. As long as you’re one of the Chosen. Didn’t work out so well for anyone who wasn’t Noah or his ilk.”

Questions pricked at Aziraphale’s psyche, and he cleared his throat, as if trying to dispel them physically.

“I can’t save everyone,” he told Crawly. “I asked. I always do ask. But I could do this for them. And look how happy it’s made them.”

“Oh yes, very  _ happy,” _ Crawly said in a deeply mocking tone.

Aziraphale took a breath, and very quietly he said, “Let them have this.” Even to him, it sounded a little too much like ‘Let me have this.’

**Christmas**

**Rome, 350 AD**

“Seems weird to celebrate Isho's birthday now when he didn't even do it while he was living down here,” Crowley said, already halfway to drunk even though the sun hadn’t yet set. 

Aziraphale didn’t know whether he ought to chide Crowley, or attempt to catch up. It was a party, after all. But what Crowley was doing didn’t seem much like partying.

“Yes, well,” he began, and then didn’t quite know how to finish, so instead he lifted the jug in front of Crowley to pour himself a cup and make a start on catching up.

“Wasn't he born in summer, anyway?” Crowley asked in a rambling manner. “I wasn’t there, but stands to reason. Shepherds hanging about in the dark and all. Not to mention they got the year completely wrong.”

Aziraphale pouted thoughtfully. “The official story is that the date has theological significance.”

“Fuck theological significance,” Crowley said with the kind of careful emphasis that can only be achieved by the drunk while trying to make themselves completely clear. “Wish I could’ve talked him into running out on the whole divine plan.”

“How can you say that?” Aziraphale asked, scandalized, although part of him realized it was only a surface outrage. “Look at all this, look at what he’s inspired! Look at the faith he’s given people.”

Crowley sputtered incoherently, finally spitting out the words, “You saw what they did to him!”

Ah. “I did,” Aziraphale admitted quietly.

The next noise Crowley made was a soft whine, and Aziraphale let him have the silence. He seemed to need to fill it. 

“I just… he was barely more than a kid.” Crowley took another drink. “And a good kid. Really wanted to help, you know. And then, and then,  _ and then all that.” _ He took a deep, shaky breath. “Your side has a lot to answer for. And I still don’t feel particularly like celebrating it.”

That… was understandable.

Aziraphale cast about for some way to lighten the mood. What came out of his mouth, in a mock-tart tone, was, “You just miss Saturnalia.”

Crowley’s mouth quirked with genuine humor, and he said, “Maybe.”

**Yule**

**Trondheim, 1028 AD**

The pagan temple was full of people, fire, alcohol, and the smell of boiling meat. Tucked into a corner was Crowley, curled around a cup of mead but looking, actually, quite sober. 

Aziraphale approached cautiously, and as he sat, Crowley frowned at him and asked, "What are you doing here?"

"I’m to make sure Olaf is remembered as a saint for spreading Christianity," Aziraphale answered primly.

Crowley snorted. “Yeah, all right, pull the other one.”

“I’m serious!”

“Good luck with that." Crowley gave a small, bitter laugh. "Does this look like a Christian country to you? Do I look like I'm hopping around on burning hot hallowed ground in this temple?"

Aziraphale chewed on his lower lip for a moment before venturing, "Well, he was introducing it. Slowly."

The demon scoffed. "What dear ol' Otto called Christianity is not like the stuff you’re used to, and mostly seems to involve burning noblewomen as witches."

There was no response that seemed appropriate to that, so Aziraphale remained silent.

Crowley looked sightlessly down into the cup of mead. "Downstairs assigned me to sow dissent between Olaf and the other lords. I barely had to nudge them. I’ll probably get another commendation. I’m beginning to hate commendations."

Aziraphale made a sympathetic noise. He'd heard a good few of these stories over the centuries.

"Guy I've been staying with." Crowley gestured at one of the drunkest specimens of the entire festival. "Drinking to honor the memory of his wife, put to death as a witch."

"Oh," was all Aziraphale could manage. The man's face was a study in damp, bedraggled pain plastered over with a thin layer of jollity.

Crowley shivered.

"I hate winter, I hate Norway, I hate Yule, I hate every fucking holiday ever invented to celebrate the fact that it’s satan-blessed cold out and dark as the pit."

Aziraphale watched the demon for a minute more before holding up the side of his voluminous fur cloak and saying, "Oh, come here."

Crowley froze for a moment, and then set down the mead to come and curl tight against Aziraphale's side.

"Now, how's this?" the angel asked.

He noticed Crowley's voice had already lost some of its edge and become almost sleepy.

"Not so bad."

**London, 2019 AD**

As part of an ongoing effort to make Crowley feel welcome, Aziraphale had never once decorated the shop for Christmas, or any of the other assorted occasions of the season.

He didn't often feel anything less than content about the choice - most of the trappings of the holiday that humans got nostalgic about were terribly modern, by the angel's standards - but today he found himself getting a bit wistful as they walked back to the bookshop after lunch, watching the shoppers passing by in their festive clothing.

By his side, Crowley made a thoughtful noise. Then his fingertips started to twitch, the way they did when he was plotting something.

"What is going on in that head of yours?" Aziraphale wondered as he let them into the shop and locked the door behind them. He had a strange feeling he wasn’t particularly going to want to open the shop this afternoon.

The corners of Crowley's mouth turned up, and he tilted his head to one side, regarding Aziraphale thoughtfully. 

"Solstice is coming up," he said. "That means holidays." 

Aziraphale thoughtfully opened and closed his mouth a few times, as if tasting the atmosphere of the room.

"I wasn’t going to mention it," he said at last. "I know you usually don’t feel much like celebrating around this time."

Crowley reached out to take Aziraphale's hand. "Well, this year I do."

"Thank you, my dear," he said, "but you don't have to pretend."

"No really," Crowley insisted. "I mean, yes. I want to make you happy. But…” Crowley struggled a bit with his words for a moment, then seemed to find the flow of them again. “For once I'm not feeling like crap about humans destroying themselves or heaven smiting everyone in sight. Because they tried their best, and they failed. Humans are still here and still doing all their silly rituals and still throwing a party every excuse they get. So why not join them?"

Aziraphale had rarely seen Crowley so earnest and talkative. He squeezed Crowley's hand and listened. 

"I feel like doing things just because they're fun," Crowley said with a growing smile. "I want to dance and shout. I want to tear open presents. I want to make hideous cookies with too many sprinkles on them. I want to kiss you under a bad likeness of a weird little poisonous plant. I want to do all those silly little things people do when they spend holidays with people they love."

“Oh, my dear. I'm so glad.” Aziraphale paused. “But I haven’t planned anything, haven’t decorated, I haven’t gotten you a gift.”

Crowley grinned widely. “Angel, you are a gift.”

“Not the way you mean,” Aziraphale objected.

“Exactly the way I mean,” Crowley said, smile turning slightly predatory. “Oh, I just want to tear all this off you. Unwrap you, starting with that ridiculous little bow.”

Aziraphale couldn’t help laughing at that; Crowley never said things like that unless he was genuinely having fun, and Aziraphale took it as a sign that he could take Crowley at his word on this and give himself over to the spirit of the season.

“Oh, you are in a good mood,” he commented, pulling Crowley closer and kissing him on the nose.

“Course I am,” Crowley murmured, “For the first time since Earth began I have everything I could ever want.”

“What, all of Hell afraid of you enough to leave you alone?” Aziraphale asked, half-joking.

Crowley pushed his face into Aziraphale’s neck and, for a moment, just breathed. “You, Angel. You, Aziraphale. You. Just you.”

Aziraphale could hear in his voice that he was still smiling, but more gently now.

He had grown used to not being able to see Crowley’s eyes, and reading every nuance of his expressions despite his ever-present sunglasses, but at this moment Aziraphale wanted more than anything to see those beautiful yellow eyes, see what this new mood did to change how they looked. 

“Well, I know where I want to start,” he said.

Crowley raised his head again, a mischievous smile shaping his mouth. “Do you?”

“Oh, absolutely. If you’ll allow me.”

The demon gave a small nod of permission and waited to see what Aziraphale would do.

Aziraphale was in awe of the trust that Crowley put in him with that simple nod, no questions, no need to know what Aziraphale intended. The angel wasn’t sure how he’d earned that trust. 

He managed to keep his hands from shaking as he reached up to gently pull Crowley’s sunglasses away.

The look in Crowley’s eyes was so very soft.

“Oh,” said Aziraphale. “I do love my present.”

Crowley looked like he might be about to burst from feeling too much. Aziraphale wanted to see all those feelings. He reached for Crowley, to kiss him, and when Crowley kissed back, welcoming him, he pushed his tongue into Crowley’s mouth, tasting, reaching for more of that demonic flavor that was rapidly becoming his new favorite. 

Crowley hummed, high and breathy, and pulled Aziraphale closer, and that noise was absolutely irresistible. Aziraphale reached for the buttons of Crowley’s waistcoat, wanting to reach other places that could get Crowley to make more noises like that.

Crowley chuckled breathlessly into their kiss. “I thought I was meant to be unwrapping you,” he said.

“It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement,” Aziraphale informed him, interrupted a couple of times by more quick, darting kisses. And by Crowley squirming indecently against him. “Perhaps we should, ah, move upstairs.”

The only answer he got was a snap of Crowley’s fingers, but that was more than enough.

Impatiently, Aziraphale pushed Crowley down onto the bed, finally parting his waistcoat and running eager fingers over the softer material of the shirt beneath. Crowley made some wordless noises, pushing into the touch, and Aziraphale loved it, loved it all, the delicious lengths of him and the sounds he made and the bright, expressive yellow eyes that showed everything he was feeling. 

“Let me, let me catch up,” Crowley stuttered. “Please, I want to see…” He gave up on words and just reached up to pluck apart Aziraphale’s bowtie and undo his top buttons, and then, with utmost care and attention, those expressive fingertips traced the lines of Aziraphale’s throat, and Aziraphale shivered.

“Yeah,” Crowley murmured, and continued down the line of buttons, pausing with every one to stroke more of the exposed skin. 

Aziraphale’s response to that was to bite his lower lip and squirm against Crowley below him, lining up the parts he’d known they’d both been manifesting ever since Crowley had mentioned unwrapping him. 

“Hnng,” Crowley said, fingers fumbling as they reached Aziraphale’s waistcoat, and for the moment he gave up on that task and pulled Aziraphale down against him, crushing their mouths together in a kiss rife with desperation. 

There was a flurry of hands, after that, each of them desperate to get to their prizes but unwilling to use miracles to undress each other. It was a sort of game, Aziraphale thought. Snapping to get them into the bedroom was one thing, but snapping to undress the other would be cheating. 

So they were still half-dressed a few minutes later, despite their growing desperation. Aziraphale had his hand grasped tight in Crowley’s hair, pulling his head back to kiss and bite at his beautiful throat. And one of Crowley’s hands had found its way inside Aziraphale’s trousers and was gripping the soft flesh of his ass with abandon.

“Love you,” Crowley gasped, pulling them tight to each other. “Oh, yesss.”

Everywhere their skin touched felt like sparks, like live electricity. Aziraphale’s mouth was on fire with it, with the taste of Crowley and with the hunger for more. He wanted his tongue everywhere, right now, tasting every part of Crowley. 

“I want you so terribly,” he said, still nosing at Crowley’s throat, “you delicious, wicked thing.”

“Then have me,” Crowley said immediately. “Please.”

Aziraphale scootched backwards on his knees, trousers flapping open where Crowley had undone them, and dedicated his own focus to the fasteners on Crowley’s shamelessly tight jeans. He couldn’t help himself and had to pause for a moment to stroke at the beautiful bulge underneath the fabric. Crowley groaned, an enraptured, frustrated noise that almost managed to be words, but not quite. Crowley’s hands bunched the fabric of Aziraphale’s shirt, which still hung off him by his elbows despite Crowley’s best efforts.

“Yes, my darling, we’re getting there,” Aziraphale murmured, and finally managed to pull the fabric away from Crowley’s lovely cock. He stroked it once with his hand, feeling the same marvelously electric sensation he’d been craving. Then, unable to bear anything else, he leaned down to taste. 

Crowley yelled, then. A vibrant, unrestrained noise of pleasure, joy, and love. Aziraphale knew with absolute certainty that no angelic choir had ever sounded sweeter.

Aziraphale took Crowley’s velvet-smooth flesh in his mouth, and sucked. Yes, that was the noise he wanted to hear. Crowley moaning at the sweet feeling that was the two of them, joined at such sensitive places. His hungry tongue lapped up more of the taste of Crowley, and drew out more of that sweet music.

“Ah, Angel!” Crowley cried. His hands scrabbled through Aziraphale’s hair, not quite a grip, not quite a caress. “Oh, fuck!”

Aziraphale thought he could never possibly get enough of the sights and sounds of Crowley in the throes of pleasure, not if they had another six thousand years to do this again and again. He was quickly becoming addicted to making Crowley come.

He was tempted to continue licking and sucking until that happened, but he needed to finish unwrapping his gift. He tugged at Crowley’s jeans, persisting until they came away and Crowley’s long legs were revealed.

Crowley used those legs to pull Aziraphale in again, then sat up, reaching to finally remove Aziraphale’s hopelessly rumpled shirt and to knock away his shoes. Then he curled his arms around the angel and buried his face in Aziraphale’s soft belly, giving a soft sigh that turned to a moan.

“Didn’t think I could want you any more than I did before,” he said, breathless, “but now that I know what it’s like to have you, it’s just. A terrible craving. Never want to stop.”

Aziraphale petted his hair and murmured, “I feel exactly the same.”

Crowley pressed wet kisses to his belly and chest for a moment more before wriggling and making an impatient noise. “Come on, let’s get you the rest of the way undressed. I just. Want all of you. Nothing in between us.”

Between them, they got Aziraphale’s trousers off, and then Crowley pulled him down to the bed, tangling their legs together and bringing so much of them into contact at once that the renewed sparks nearly shorted out Aziraphale’s brain.

He rocked his hips, and they both shuddered delightfully, Crowley moaning and Aziraphale’s breath stuttering in his chest. Soon Crowley’s hands were on his ass again, bringing the friction between them to an exquisite peak. 

“Ah,” Aziraphale gasped. “Crowley.” The name sounded reverent to his ears. 

“Hmm,” Crowley agreed, reaching between them with one hand to encircle the perfectly sensitive flesh of their cocks. “Ah-hahh,” he gasped as he seated his palm and fingers right where they were most wanted, and then kept rocking into them.

“Yes, oh, my dear, yes,” Aziraphale praised, and leaned down to nose at Crowley’s jaw as their motions continued, finding a rhythm. The moment was almost perfect. Aziraphale wanted more, somehow, to touch Crowley more, to hold him more, to treat him more like the precious thing he was.

“May I…?” Aziraphale asked.

“Anything,” Crowley answered before Aziraphale could try to explain. 

So Aziraphale rolled them, landing on his back and holding Crowley tight to him, stroking the long lines of his back. Then he curled his hand around Crowley’s hand where it was again encircling their cocks.

They both moaned loudly, and now this was perfect, Crowley’s weight in his arms.

The moment was heavy, but also somehow lighter than air. Significant but easy. Over the past months, touching each other like this had become comfortable, but it never became less incredible. Holding Crowley in his hands, having Crowley trust him like this?

Oh, that was a gift, and Aziraphale understood in that moment what Crowley had been saying. 

“Oh, my love,” he said. “Oh, my most precious love.” He squeezed a little tighter, stroking them both hard. “I want.”

“Yes,” Crowley agreed, and his motions were frantic as he rocked into their joined hands, breath coming faster. “Closer. Angel, please. I want. Closer.”

Aziraphale kissed him clumsily, and then all there was was shared breath, skin, pressure, and sparks, two pushing close as ever two physical beings could, and then just over the edge, just a touch closer.

Their edges blurred, just a taste of what they’d done once before, following the guidance of Agnes Nutter’s prophecy. They shared sensations, just the edge of what the other was feeling, and oh.

Oh.

The two of them were everything, an explosion of sensation that must encompass the known universe. They moved as one, bucking against each other and reaching for just a little more pleasure, bringing each other just a little further, until they were sobbing with it, shaking with the intensity of it. One last twitch of their fingers around the hot and sensitive flesh of their pulsing cocks and they were done, absolutely finished, and all they could do was breathe. 

Wet and breathless, they cradled each other, and Aziraphale had never felt more at peace. 

He ran his fingers through Crowley’s hair, and he thought about how precious the demon was to him, had always been, really, even before the whole antichrist business, and he sighed a little and kissed Crowley on the temple.

“Can I ever apologize enough for keeping you waiting as long as I did?” he mused softly. “For choosing heaven over you so many times?”

“I always knew you’d come ‘round,” Crowley answered, sleepy-sounding. “I had faith in you.”

Behind that, Aziraphale could hear ‘I needed to.’ Like Adam and Eve needing to believe that the sun would keep returning. Like all humans, really. The kind of faith Crowley had in him was a very human thing, Aziraphale supposed.

“I tried not to hope but I always did,” Crowley continued. “I always believed, somewhere in me, even when the rest of me didn’t. It’s the believing and not believing all at once that hurts.” Crowley’s bright yellow eyes still held all the echoes of years and years of longing, of being pulled between one desire and another, and Aziraphale recognized it more vividly than he’d thought he might.

“Yes,” the angel said. “Yes, I believe I understand.”

For Aziraphale, though, his resolution had been the other way around. He’d lost faith in heaven, and that had been such a relief. But he still believed in humanity, in Crowley, in all the good that was in the world that never came from heaven.

It felt like a better faith, to believe in billions of sparks of good rather than following one source without question. Humanity had saved the world. Just people being people.

Everything God had created, rather than only one fallible, imperfect institution.

“So what are we celebrating this year?” Crowley asked, flopping over to lay snakelike across Aziraphale’s chest and interrupting his thoughts.

Aziraphale stroked his face gently.

“It's been dark for a very long time, hasn't it?” he said solemnly. “It's just gotten darker and darker every day and sometimes I thought that this year, just maybe, the light wouldn't come back. But it did. And I’m so glad it did."

"That doesn't exactly answer my question," Crowley said with a soft smirk. "What are we celebrating? What arbitrary marker are we naming our little party after? When we raise our glasses, what will we toast?"

Aziraphale kissed Crowley's knuckles, one by one, and then held his hand like the treasure it was.

"Everything, my darling," he said. "Everything."


End file.
